December 10, 2018

December 10, 2018

Monday of the Second Week of Advent

Is 35:1-10; Ps 85:9-10, 11-12, 13-14; Lk 5:17-26

In Luke’s Gospel, the paralyzed man’s friends want him to be healed; they want to help him. He needs an Advent journey bringing him into Jesus’ presence and once there to be made whole, to become one of the healthy members of the community. His friends know what he needs but they cannot get through the door, so they lower him through the roof in a kind of baptismal immersion into the presence of the community at which Jesus is the center. Like Isaiah’s highway: “the holy way,” upon which the redeemed walk, the way leads home. Jesus tells the healed man to get up and to go home. Friends are at home. Family is there. Like the cured paralytic, I too can be home if I journey during Advent to the love and mercy that surrounds my hours and days among the members of my family and community.